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Sean Green stepped out of his car, straightened his tie, and nudged his thin-rimmed glasses up his nose. The warehouse might not look like much, one more in the string of Fardale Foods facility audits, but today was different. This was warehouse fifty, a place with performance figures so good they had to be faked, and Sean was a man on a mission, ready to drag out the truth through the power of audit. He expected resistance, confrontation, even anger from the supervisors here, and he’d armored himself in his best suit ready to face the challenge. If he showed management that he was up to dealing with this place, then promotion was guaranteed.
Sean pulled up the inspection spreadsheet on his tablet and strode to the warehouse’s staff entrance. Before he could swipe his badge to enter, the door burst open. A bell chimed, more fitting for an antiques shop than a modern warehouse, and Sean glanced at his spreadsheet, trying to work out which category he should record that problem under.
“Hi there!” A woman stood in the doorway, beaming out at Sean. She was in her mid-twenties, only a little younger than him. Her black hair was tied neatly back, but her brightly colored shirt would have drawn disapproving looks at the head office. “I’m Fay Li, and you must be Sean. It’s great to meet you.”
She held out a bright yellow safety vest, which Sean diligently donned - after all, it was important to follow the correct procedure - before following her into the building. Inside, he instinctively turned to the right, where the shift supervisor’s office sat in every Fardale Foods warehouse.
“Don’t bother with that,” Fay said, waving him down the corridor. “It’s just figures and paperwork, you can check that any time. If you’ve come all this way, you’ll want to see us at work, right?”
Sean frowned. Figures and paperwork were the bedrock of good management, not a thing to be dismissed. But on the other hand, he did want to see the warehouse in action. That was where he’d find the real evidence of the faked performance figures.
“Fine,” he said. “Show me.”
*** abbreviated version for website ***
Sean ducked as a crate of corn chips hurtled past his head.
“What do you mean, you don’t know what this is?” he snapped.
“I mean, it’s magic,” Fay said, pulling out a scanner gun, “but it’s not one of our spells.”
Like the others, Fay’s scanner gun glittered, and waving it left a glowing trail through the air. Sean rubbed his eyes. Was he really seeing magic?
Either way, it was dangerous to be around, with boxes and crates flying all around. There was an empty shelf next to Sean, a wiggly worm picture on the wall showing where it should have been refilled, so he crawled into the sheltered space.
“This is a completely inappropriate way of working,” Sean said, typing into his tablet as he talked. “We have standard ways of working for a reason.”
“Fardale’s methods are so old-fashioned.” Fay waved her scanner wand and a protective cage of light emerged from the air around them, fending off the flying boxes.
“Those methods have made Fardale a household name.”
“We can do better, I… Oh bother, where did the zombies come from?”
*** abbreviated version for website ***
“My warehouse now!” the Gremlin King cackled. “And it will be run my way – mindless obedience to my managers!”
More gremlins appeared between the stacks, strands of gray magic flowing between their fingers. Some of them caught Fay’s workers with that magic, turning them into more mindless zombies, while others used their power to organize the zombies they already had.
“This is your doing, isn’t it?” Fay called out. “The flying boxes, the zombies, all of it!”
“Mine mine mine!” The Gremlin King shrieked. “Chaos in which to seize control, and now true order, at my command.”
Some of the zombies closed in on the remaining free workers, while the others turned to taking over their tasks. With sluggish, repetitive movements they took boxes off shelves and started piling them up for delivery. The Gremlin King disappeared into the shadows, while his minions managed their workers with cackling glee.
“I suppose this suits you,” Fay said as she extended her magical cage to keep the zombies back from her and Sean. “Mindless obedience, identical behavior, it’s the good old Fardale Foods way.”
“I’m not so sure.” Sean hated to admit it, but he’d seen something in her ways of working: the colorful visual management, the fluid flow of boxes moved with the right tools, even the exchange of ideas in the wrestling ring. By comparison, the zombies seemed like a poor sort of workers, all shifting goods in exactly the same way, whether it was the best way to handle their box or not.
The way the gremlins managed them only added to the problems. The green-skinned managers were clearly very territorial, and they’d started moving shelves around to keep each other’s teams out. That made it harder for the zombies to establish movement down the aisles, as every other turn was blocked. Collaboration became impossible across those improvised walls.
That didn’t stop the zombies trying to work like they’d been told, unthinkingly following the same instructions over and over. One kept trying to lift crates off an empty shelf. Another added an unending stream of boxes to the same pile, even as it toppled and fell, bags of dried pasta bursting across the floor.
*** abbreviated version for website ***
The Gremlin King sat behind a desk, reviewing performance reports. He looked up with a scowl.
“What you want?” he hissed.
“To save the warehouse from you!”
Swept up in the adventure, Sean charged straight at the Gremlin King. The King waved his hand and gray magic flung Sean back against the wall, knocking the breath out of him. He slid, aching, to the ground.
Fay fluttered in, her scanner wand waving. She flung bright magic at the Gremlin King, but a gray haze burst from the manager’s desk, dissipating her spell.
“It’s no use,” she said. “He’s tied his power to his authority in the factory, and that’s keeping him safe.”
“Yes yes yes!” the Gremlin King said. “No getting rid of me.”
“I know all about authority,” Sean said, pulling his tablet from his jacket pocket. “And all about keeping it in check. Fay, can you enchant this?”
She waved her scanner over the tablet and the air around it shone. Sean pulled up his audit of the warehouse.
*** abbreviated version for website ***
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Delivered by our SOURCE Newsletter, Short Stories explores the drama of work through real and fictional storytelling. All characters and storylines are fictional unless otherwise specified. To sponsor, collaborate or report an issue, please use the suggestion button in our main nav.
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